Notes from a Canadian Yoda: Darren Kuropatwa at METC 2010

These are my notes from a part of Darren Kuropatwa's METC 2010 workshop, "Extreme (web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover." I was only able to attend a little of the afternoon session. WOW. If you ever have a chance to hear Darren present in person, do not miss it. I do not use the title, "Yoda," lightly here. It's a term Marco Torres uses to refer to those people in our lives who are our wise mentors. If we could choose our own Yodas (and virtually, of course, we can to an extent) I would definitely choose Darren.

MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS BELOW ARE IN ALL CAPS

All of Darren's METC 2010 presentation resources are available on his wiki: dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/METC-2010

#2 search engine today: YouTube

Example video: help with bowdrill set

Darren showed foldplay.com to show how to make personalized kaleidocycles

Stuff kids made for me 5 years ago on paper doesn't exist anymore
- that's not the case for a lot of digital content
- is it really ephemeral? Some digital artifacts are more permanent

4 people in a group is not a working group, it's a social occasion (keep collaborative group sizes limited to 2 or 3)

create the problem, solve the problem
- publish it online using any way you like

DEV: Developing Expert Voices
- Developing Expert Voices (capstone projects)

Blog: Developing expert voices
- students linked to our housed all their digital work on this project
- usually started by 2nd or 3rd week of term, students worked on this all semester

If you can use a pattern you identify which underlies
- mathematics is all about patterns

Blog: Mathematics is the Science of Patterns
- project done in HALO

MITSOP Episode 1 video

Advice: Don't do all of this NOW
- always ask: how can I get the students to do this work?
- I just started with my blog, which at the beginning I was just reading and writing
- it's not like you will go back to school and do all this next week
- now you are ideally situated to be the model for others
- big danger of giving presentations: People say "you can do it" because of A, B, C and D
- five years ago I did not have these skills
- I evolved, I grew into using these skills
- there are certain underlying patterns in the way things

3 most revolutionary technologies of our time (IMHO - Darren)
1- The hyperlink (so now you and a person in Azerbaijan are neighbors!)
2- Tags: when you get your head around tags and how tagging works, combined with hyperlinks can be used together, it's amazing what can be done
- knowledge is no longer organized hierarchically, it is organized organically via networks (folksonomies)
3- RSS: the glue that holds it all together (via RSS you can take my Flickr stream, and have it beamed over to you)

Great quotes about learning and change Flickr group

Reasons to publish student work:
- you need to create ways for students to look inside each other's heads
- Good things happen when you publish
- you'll know they know when they create content that educates

"A computer is an instrument whose music is composed of ideas"

Web 2.0 Cool tools for Schools wiki

Be careful not to post your email address online b/c of spambots

Technorati Tags:
learning, technology, remix, google, maps, googlemaps, collaboration, math, lesson, school, darren, kuropatwa

On this day..

• Choose teaching - 2010
• Telling a story with Google Search queries - 2010
• ISTEconnects: Cell Phone Audio Recordings and another NECC Travel $ Opportunity - 2009
• The SMART framework for goal setting - 2008
• Are you talking about digital citizenship with students? - 2008
• Podcast227: Digital Storytelling Through the Eyes of a Child by Christy Paradise - 2008
• We have so far to go... - 2008
• Podcast226: Celebrate Oklahoma Voices (A statewide digital storytelling project) - 2008
• Ideas about digital social networking - 2007
• Students Providing Tech Support: The 21st Century A/V Club - 2007